Fowl Not Foul - May 2000

May was a month of alternating torrential rain and dry warmth. As the days grew longer, the hens laid more eggs, and the goose continued to lay eggs too.

Pseudo-Swan the gander and Sian the goose mated frequently, so much so that the poor goose got a bruised bald patch on the back of her head where Pseudo held onto her during mating, and inadvertantly pulled out feathers and pinched skin. I was worried that Pseudo-Swan might be hurting Sian, so I tried seperating the goosish lovers - but when I did, they just called for each other incessantly and became distressed, so I let them go back together again.

On the evening of Thursday 18th May a terrible accident happened. At fowl bedtime I saw red ex-battery hen feathers strewn across the garden. I feared the worst, as foxes had attacked the flock twice back in May 1998, and I made sure to double-check that all the birds were safely in their house for the night - I could find eveyone except Alkacell. Suspecting a fox or dog attack, I searched everywhere for the body of a dead hen or a trail of feathers leading to the wild woodland behind the garden. Eventually I found Alkacell lying on her stomach in a hollow on the ground, fluffed, cold and limp, unable to hold her head up. Amazingly she was alive, so I gently picked her up and immediately brought her into the house so that I could inspect her and work out what may have happened to her.

Poor Alkacell was in a bad way. She had bald patches all over her back and neck, where feathers had been removed. There were bruises on her skin, and I carefully checked for the puncture marks of bite wounds, but there were none. Her face was swollen, and she could hardly lift her head up. Her comb and face were scratched and bleeding, and the hapless little hen could only just open one of her eyes a few millimetres- the other was swollen shut. Very gingerly I inspected the injured hen all over for broken bones - luckily her neck wasn't broken, and nor were her wings, but her right leg (bearing her I.D. ring) was badly broken. So, with the help of Colin, I carefully removed the ring with wire cutters, splinted the leg securely so that it couldn't move any more, and gave little Alkacell some homeopathic Arnica, which is a medicine to relieve the initial shock and pain of an accident. I also gave Alkacell some PolyAid solution, which is a special Emergency Treatment for sick and injured birds and animals. Alkacell was made comfortable in a cage lined with towels which I'd made into a deep nest, so that she could be warm and get some quiet rest without having to put any pressure on her broken leg. She lay quietly and motionless, her neck stretched out and her head supported by the pillow-like towel nest.

From Alkacell's injuries and the evidence left in the garden, we worked out that her leg ring had become caught on the netting protecting the berry bushes from the hens. While caught, the geese had found the luckless Alkacell and attacked her, probably beating her with their wings as well as biting her with their sharply serrated beaks. The bruises on the bald skin of Alkacell's back looked like goose peck marks. It looked as though the geese had had the unfortunate hen by the head at one stage, as the cuts and scratches on Alkacell's face and comb looked exactly the same shape as the serrations on the inside of a goose's beak. Alkacell was found some distance away from the netting where she'd been entangled by her ring, so the geese must have wrenched her free of the netting, breaking her leg in the process. Usually the hens are able to get away from the geese easily, but not the unfortunate Alkacell. I didn't punish the geese, as they were just following their instincts and doing their job defending their territory. It isn't their fault that their instincts tend to be extremely strong in the springtime, and it wasn't their fault that Alkacell had become caught on the fence. I felt responsible for Alkacell's accident, because I'd put the rings on the hens in the first place.

Poor Alkacell had been through such a terrifying ordeal that I didn't expect her to be alive by the next morning.

But amazingly she was, and she was even able to hold her head up on her own. After letting the rest of the flock out into the garden, I removed their rings so that Alkacell's terrible fate could not befall any of the other chickens. Alkacell seemed surprisingly well considering her injuries and experiences of the previous day. When we first saw her in the morning she was standing on her good leg, holding the injured one up off the floor. I brought her into the living room so that she could have company, and so that I could keep an eye on her. She was hungry and thirsty, and ate and drank greedily. I obtained some Comfrey Cream, which is renowned for healing broken bones and tissue injuries (in fact, it's folk-name is knit-bone), and gingerly placed a good thick layer of it around Alkacell's broken leg and replaced the splint and dressing. I also gave her another Arnica tablet, which I placed on the towel in front of her so that she could peck it up herself, which she quickly did. I was glad that I didn't have to cause her the further stress of giving her the tablet forcibly.

Right: Alkacell standing on one leg on 19th May.

Note the bald patches on her back.

Below: Alkacell's face. She's so swollen here that she can't open her left eye at all, and can only open the right one a tiny crack - just enough for her to see food and water.

Alkacell got through her first and second days following the injury, and by the second day she could fully open her right eye. But still the left eye remained shut. this concerned me, and i thought that maybe her eyeball was damaged underneath the lids. Very very carefully I bathed the eye with cotton-wool soaked in water. The eyelids seemed glued shut, but after a while they came slightly apart, and I was extremely relieved to see that Alkacell's left eyeball didn't seem to be damaged at all. During the day the injured hen was able to open the eye more and more, and on the next day she could open it fully. She became more active too, and found that if she used her right wing as a sort of balance instead of her right leg, she could make her way across the room by hopping on her good leg and pressing her right wing on the carpet. She even laid an egg on 21st, 22nd and 23rd May - this was very surprising indeed, as I'd thought that she would have been conserving every bit of calcium to make new bone, instead of eggshells, with.

On 21st May I heard a commotion in the garden. I looked out of the window and saw Nicad chasing a large carrion crow out of the garden ! Nicad is one of the hens fairly high in the pecking order, and is therefore bold enough to tackle such large intruders.

I continued to keep an eye on Alkacell's broken leg, and changed the dressing every day, reapplying the Comfrey Cream. She didn't lay any more eggs. Because Alkacell had taken to exploring the room in her ungainly manner, I was worried that she might damage her broken leg even further, so we decided to take her to the Vet so that her leg could be properly immobilised. The Vet examined Alkacell's leg, manipulating it to find the breaks, while the hen screamed and swore at him. The Vet found that her leg was in fact broken in two places, one either side of the place her ring would have been. He gave us the following choices, in ascending order of financial outlay:-

We decided on the second option, so the Vet immobilised the leg with a thick layer of bandage and a metal splint. Alkacell hated the leg bandage. When we got home, she flapped and cried, shaking the leg as much as she could - so much so that she repeatedly fell onto the ground in an ungainly heap. As the Vet had advised us, Alkacell gradually got used to the bandage, and didn't struggle against it so violently....though even after a few days, she still shook the leg intermittently, occaisionally overbalancing herself and falling forward onto her comfy towel. Because of Alkacell's behaviour, I kept an eye on her so that she couldn't get herself into too much of a panic when she tried to shake the bandage off. This meant that I took her with me, wherever I went, so that I could right her when she got herself into a mess, and so that I could clear away her droppings so she wouldn't step in them and dirty herself or her dressing.

Left, right :

Various pictures of Alkacell wearing her smart leg bandage,

22nd May 2000.

Above: Alkacell's face still slightly swollen, but she is now able to open her left eye completely. 22nd May 2000.

Alkacell continued to hate her bandage, and ate and drank less and less. I compensated for her loss of appetite by giving her table scraps of rice and beans, and PolyAid to ensure that she was getting the nescessary viatmins, minerals and proteins to help her recovery. On 25th May I took her to see the Vet again, who was quite satisfied that the bandage was working well, even though the hen hated it. Alkacell remembered the Vet, and tried to peck him. The dressing would be changed in a week's time, and I was instructed to continue giving her PolyAid until her appetite returned.

On 24th May, Professor Darwin went broody, and two days later Roadkill joined her. I was absolutely astounded to see that ex-battery hen Darwin had gone broody - the breeds of bird used in Battery Farms have been ruthlessly genetically selected for years to eradicate broodiness. After all, a sitting hen is not producing eggs, and therefore is not commercially viable. If any sign of broodiness occurred, the culprit was culled. This practice has been going on since the 1920's, when battery houses were first introduced.....(and had been going on to a lesser extent before then, during the establishment of non-sitting, high-egg-production breeds such as the Leghorn, Ancona, and the like). So the last thing I expected was to have a broody ex-battery hen. Professor Darwin had flown in the face of modern genetics by having a throwback broody gene - I wonder if she knows who she's named after?

It would be lovely to get a batch of fertile eggs for Professor Darwin to incubate and hatch chicks from, especially as she had such a terrible start in life at the Battery Farm. But unfortunately we are full to capacity with hens at the moment, and there is nowhere to let the chicks safely forage away from the rest of the flock, and of course the geese.


Above: Professor Darwin adjusting her nest - See how she has fluffed out all her feathers...	Above: Roadkill, brooding next to Darwin.

Roadkill, being the more aggressive of the two broodies, would reach toward Darwin and steal eggs from her, rolling them out from under Darwin's warm body with her beak, and placing them under her own feathery, broody body.

Above: Professor Darwin wondering where her clutch of eggs has gone!....and Roadkill, trying to look innnocent.....

The two broodies were well and truly installed in the nestbox. So much so that any non-broody hens wishing to lay eggs had to push their way into the nestbox. Once their eggs had been laid, the broodies would take them and add them to their own clutches which they happily thought they were incubating.

Above: Michael Caine Alan Partridge Brahma trying to jostle her way into the nestbox in order to lay an egg. 28th May 2000.

On 29th May Boggy the chipmunk knocked her exercise wheel off its mountings, and she needed to be let out so that it could be put back again. Totally unperturbed by the hen in the room, she went straight toward Alkacell, to investigate her. The hen stood still, watching the chipmunk with interest while Boggy sniffed at Alkacell's bandage and proceeded to eat her food ! Alkacell wasn't going to tolerate her food being stolen by a cheeky chipmunk, and aimed a warning peck at Boggy, who scuttled away startled.

On 30th May Alkacell had a third trip to the Vet, when her fractured leg was checked and the dressing changed. The break lower on the leg was apparently healing well, but the break in the centre of the leg wasn't healing as well. The Vet changed the style of Alkacell's bandage for a less bulky one, with more support around the part of the break which wasn't healing well. She would go back to the Vet in a weeks' time.